A Special Report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

President Obama has moved the nation toward war with Russia, up to 500,000 are dead in Syria, Libya is a disaster, and Germany is welcoming a Muslim invasion of Europe that threatens the collapse of the European Union and NATO. Two million refugees are leaving the Middle East, some of them destined for the U.S.

Yet, Department of Defense News, an official Pentagon public relations outfit, released a story [1] announcing that "Defense leaders hailed the commitment and accomplishments of departing commander in chief President Barack Obama in a formal military ceremony as he closes out his presidency."

We were told that "During the ceremony, the president reviewed the troops from the five military branches, and received from [Defense Secretary Ashton] Carter the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. The event featured a 21-gun salute, and music from the U.S. Army Band ‘Pershing's Own' and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps."

If we had anything approaching an honest and objective news media, Obama would not even have attempted such a spectacle, out of fear that he would become a laughingstock. He has presided over a humanitarian disaster in Syria, where American troops are now dying, and his no-win war on the Islamic State has never been approved by Congress.

The CIA and the Terrorists

PBS Newshour ran an interview [2] with Obama's CIA Director, John Brennan, in which he said regarding Syria: "If we had a chance to do it over again, would there have been some adjustments and changes? I can't speak for policy-makers. I'm not a policy-maker. But when I look back, in light of the way things evolved, I think that there could have been some adjustments to some of the policies, not just by the United States, but by other countries, in order to address this question earlier or, and not allow the ISILs and the Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaidas to gain momentum and steam and taking advantage of the destruction of that country." Brennan went on to say, "...I think the way that the situation unfolded was-is regrettable."

How does Obama's CIA director get away with simply saying that the human misery and suffering in Syria spilling over into Europe are "regrettable?" Where is the accountability for this debacle? And on what legal and constitutional basis is America at war in Syria anyway?

Welcome to the world of what can be called media malpractice. Our media have fallen and they can't get up. These matters of war and peace, life and death, are not significant enough to rise to the level of sustained media interest. After all, they might interfere with Obama's approval ratings and tarnish his legacy.

It's not as if the media don't understand what Obama's CIA has been doing. The Washington Post reported [3] that a secret CIA operation to train and arm rebels in Syria had cost $1 billion by the middle of 2015. The Post said the program the CIA program set up in 2013 was "to bolster moderate forces."

But according to Brennan on PBS, more radical groups joined the fight, leading to a "regrettable" situation.

If we had journalists trained in objective news reporting, we would have a media demanding accountability from the Obama administration over a "regrettable" policy that has spun out of control, leading to a human disaster of astounding proportions throughout the Middle East and Europe. Some are calling the Russian/Iranian/Syrian counterattack "genocide."

On the left, fortunately, the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has taken note of the fiasco, highlighting the fact that The Washington Post ran a column [4] by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) insisting that the U.S. had "done nothing" in Syria. That's nothing to the tune of $1 billion by the middle of 2015. FAIR wondered, as did I, whether the editors of the Post considered attaching a note to the McCain column stating that "the CIA has spent up to $1 billion a year on the Syrian opposition, or roughly $1 out of every $15 dollars the agency spends."

Our Warnings

Back in 2013, this columnist warned [5] that Obama's Syria policy, which was supported by McCain, threatened to embolden al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Syria. That is precisely what happened.

When Brian Kilmeade of Fox News objected to "moderate" Syrian rebels yelling "Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar," McCain shot back: "Would you have a problem with an American or Christians saying ‘Thank God, Thank God?' That's what they're saying. Come on! Of course they're Muslims, but they're moderates and I guarantee you they are moderates."

"Jihad Watch" director Robert Spencer commented that "Allahu akbar" does not mean "Thank God." Rather, he said, "It is a war cry which means ‘Allah is greater,'" and "is essentially a proclamation of superiority." Spencer notes that it is the same cry that Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members shout as they kill Christians and destroy Christian churches.

At the time, however, many different publications, including Politico, The Huffington Post, Business Insider and Mediaite, ran stories about the exchange which claimed that McCain had somehow "shamed" Brian Kilmeade and Fox News, as if McCain knew what he was talking about and that Kilmeade had been exposed as an ignoramus.

Spencer wrote, "McCain's appalling ignorance and Obama's ongoing enthusiasm for all things Muslim Brotherhood, including the Syrian opposition, are leading the U.S. into disaster."

That disaster has come to pass, not because the U.S. did "nothing," as claimed by McCain, but because the U.S. did "something" to the tune of $1 billion and still failed. Now, McCain wants strong sanctions against Russia, over what he calls a hacking operation that constituted an "act of war" against the United States.

Using dubious "intelligence" reports, including one from the same CIA that engineered the Syrian disaster, Obama has announced sanctions against Russia and expulsions of Russian officials from the U.S.

No Declaration of War

Needless to say, Congress never declared war on Syria, in order to justify CIA funding of the "rebels" there. The Congress has also not declared war on the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, and yet we are at war in the Middle East against them, and American troops are dying on the battlefield.

In a matter-of-fact manner, The Washington Post recently reported [6], "In his first floor speech since he and Hillary Clinton lost the election, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) revived one of his signature issues Wednesday: urging Congress to authorize military force against the Islamic State terrorist group."

That "signature issue" happens to involve the constitutional requirement that Congress alone can declare war. The term "signature" suggests that Kaine has made it into his own unique cause, and that other members don't share his enthusiasm. The media certainly don't care for what he is doing. After all, his analysis undermines the legal and constitutional basis of much of what Obama has been doing in the Middle East.

Is this not an issue about which the media, left and right, can agree: that the Obama administration and Congress should be held accountable when wars are conducted without proper authority? Does a Commander-in-Chief deserve the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service and a 21-gun salute for going to war without the advice and consent of Congress?

In a speech [7] paying tribute to Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott C. Dayton of Woodbridge, Virginia, who was killed in combat in Syria, Kaine highlighted "the costs of two and a half years of war against ISIL." Kaine said, "I continue to believe, and I will say this in a very personal way as a military dad, that the troops we have deployed overseas deserve to know that Congress is behind this mission. As this war has expanded into two-plus years...more and more of our troops are risking and losing their lives far from home, I am concerned and raise again something I've raised often on this floor-that there is a tacit agreement to avoid debating this war in the one place it ought to be debated: in the halls of Congress."

It has been reported that there are approximately 300 American troops on the ground inside Syria. Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott C. Dayton, 42, was killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in November near Ayn Issa, Syria.

Department of Defense News reported his death in a tiny story [8] which carried the headline, "Department of Defense Identifies Navy Casualty." He lost his life on Thanksgiving Day, November 24.

Senator Kaine is Right

The war against ISIS is based on the Congressional passage of the authorization for use of military force in September of 2001 to go after al-Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America. "We see that that authorization has been stretched way beyond what it was intended to do," Kaine noted.

Demonstrating that he was not willing to get Obama off the hook, Kaine went on to say, "President Obama recently announced that the authorization is now going to be expanded to allow use of military action against al-Shabab, the African terrorist group-a dangerous terrorist group to be sure-but al-Shabab did not begin until 2007. So an original authorization that was very specific by this body to allow action against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks is now being used all over the globe against organizations that didn't even exist when the 9/11 attack occurred."

The New York Times reported [9] Obama's move in a matter-of-fact way under the headline, "Obama Expands War With Al Qaeda to Include Shabab in Somalia." The Times explained, "The administration has decided to deem the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia, to be part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials."

The paper acknowledged this "stretching of the 2001 war authorization against the original Al Qaeda to cover other Islamist groups in countries far from Afghanistan-even ones, like the Shabab, that did not exist at the time-has prompted recurring objections from some legal and foreign policy experts." The Times added, "Under the 2001 authorization, the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with a specific organization, not every Islamist militant in the world. But that authority has proved elastic."

So the Constitution is being disregarded in favor of the "stretching" of an old resolution that has proven to be "elastic." How can weasel words like these be reported in a paper that is supposed to hold the government accountable?

Senator Kaine noted, "When the new Congress is sworn in in early January, I think 80 percent of the members of Congress were not here when the September 14, 2001 authorization was passed. So the 80 percent of us that were not here in 2001 have never had a meaningful debate or vote upon this war against ISIL."

Kaine pointed out that when Obama spoke about "the need to go on offense against ISIL" in September of 2014, "it took him six months from the start of hostilities to even deliver to Congress a proposed authorization."

Congress never acted on it and Obama continued the war anyway. Kaine added, "As my President knows, who not only is a Senator but a historian, the founding documents of this country are so unusual still today in making the initiation of war a legislative rather than an executive function."

He went on to say that "...it seems to me to be almost the height of public immorality to force people to risk and give their lives in support for a mission we're unwilling to discuss."

Obama's lawless and unconstitutional actions had actually begun earlier, when he waged a war on Libya that ultimately produced the Benghazi massacre of four Americans. My June 2, 2011, column [10] had noted, "In the Senate, McCain, who has turned into an advocate for Al-Jazeera, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the war, conducted with the approval of the Arab League and the United Nations but not Congress. Al-Jazeera, committed to the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, openly backs the ‘pro-democracy fighters' in Libya, playing down their links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

Syria was a virtual replay of the Benghazi debacle, only on a much larger scale.

What was happening in Libya, as Accuracy in Media's (AIM) Citizens' Commission on Benghazi had documented [11], was that the U.S. under Obama had "switched sides" in the war on terror in favor of the terrorists.

The war in Libya was not only immoral but illegal and unconstitutional. But the media failed to acknowledge the facts. Under the War Powers Act, a president can go to war on his own only if there is an imminent threat to the U.S., and there is a 60-day deadline for the withdrawal of forces. Obama violated both provisions of the law. There was no direct or immediate threat to the U.S. from Libya, and Obama ignored the 60-day deadline for approval from Congress.

Yet in 2007 then-Senator Obama had loudly declared that "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Trump's Challenges

President-elect Donald J. Trump's detractors claim he is entering the presidency in the midst of a constitutional crisis stemming from alleged Russian hacking into the email systems of Democratic Party politicians.

But we are already in a constitutional crisis caused by Obama's illegal and unconstitutional actions. The failure of the media to hold Obama accountable for the wars which take the lives of members of the Armed Forces is a dramatic indication of how "media malpractice" goes beyond false facts and fake news.

The facts are not in dispute in regard to Obama's actions that committed the U.S. to wars in the Middle East without the approval of Congress. The issue is clear-cut.

Obama, the alleged historian and legal scholar, doesn't want to talk about that. Instead, at the military ceremony in his honor, he said [12], "Service members can now serve the country they love without hiding who they are or who they love." In fact, Defense Secretary Carter has opened up the military, under Obama's direction, even to the transgendered, with the Pentagon paying for their sex change operations.

This is what it has been all about for Obama-social experimentation and diversity, not fighting or winning wars. But his wars have not been without cost-in lives and refugees and more global terrorism.

Senator Kaine has been willing to go beyond political partisanship to demand that the Constitution be obeyed. Let's hope that he finds a sympathetic ear in President Trump. It would be a way to move forward on a bipartisan basis to confront foreign dangers and threats.

The media's dereliction of duty in matters of war and peace would then be exposed for all to see.

[1] released a story: https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1042207/defense-leaders-salute-obama-at-armed-forces-farewell-ceremony?source=GovDelivery

[2] an interview: http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2017/01/04/john-brennan-demonstrates-cia-analysis-not-taken-gospel-video/

[3] reported: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html?utm_term=.53c38dec1e04

[4] ran a column: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccain-we-have-a-stake-in-syria-yet-we-have-done-nothing/2016/12/22/229678da-c7b7-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html?utm_term=.bbca5d659296

[5] warned: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/war-on-syria-means-victory-for-al-qaeda/

[6] reported: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/kaine-pressures-senate-colleagues-trump-for-authorized-war-against-islamic-state/2016/11/30/1dfa6a08-b726-11e6-959c-172c82123976_story.html?utm_term=.46a459bb688c

[7] speech: http://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/kaine-renews-call-for-congress-to-vote-on-war-against-isil-encourages-new-debate-on-changing-security-challenges

[8] a tiny story: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1013088/department-of-defense-identifies-navy-casualty

[9] reported: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/politics/obama-expands-war-with-al-qaeda-to-include-shabab-in-somalia.html

[10] column: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/forget-weinergate-obama-is-impeachable-over-libya/

[11] documented: http://www.aim.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/AIM-Citizens-Commission-on-Benghazi-FINAL-REPORT-June-2016.pdf

[12] he said: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/04/remarks-president-armed-forces-full-honor-review-farewell-ceremony